Talking strategically

I15

The discussion that's had around diversity of tactics is shallow. I think that we…[talk so much] about tactics that we don't ever talk about strategy and I don't necessarily think that diversity of tactics, writ large, is a strategy in itself….If I say that we accept a diversity of tactics, there [are still] obviously some tactics that [some] people support more than others and I think that we need to do better to define what we mean when we say…‘diversity of tactics’ because we never mean all tactics….[T]here's always people who think that engaging with government is selling out and there's always people who think that breaking windows is violence.

Connecting struggles

I12

[I spend] a lot of time networking with people and trying to be inspired by others and also trying to have conversations with people to...share some of my experiences and knowledge...with them and...be an active part of the resistance against capitalism, against the state, against prisons, and to support people who have had…[their] freedom taken away from them by [the] prison society that we live in.

Airing our differences

I28

...polemicizing can be a danger and people don't talk, or groups don't talk, to each other. I agree that to some extent it's not helpful. To some extent it is. To give people a chance to really explicate the intricacies of what they model for a better society, I mean to some extent that's good. Let's hear that.

Moving on

I21

I think that your generation is starting ahead of where my generation started and that brings me some hope. Now I think there are a bunch of things that I think you guys are doing that is totally as stupid as we did but there are things that I think you are thinking about, and concerned about, and critical about, and open about that was not reflected in the left wing movements of the sixties and seventies….there were many things we couldn't have known. But I think this generation of activists has a body of knowledge based on the trajectory of things that have happened in the last thirty, forty years that you are actually more humble about.

Organizing and alternatives

I24

If the goal is equality, for example, then you have to organize society in such a way that you're going to get that equality and you have to organize the economy in such a way that gives you that equality. That means that the very ethos of this economy has to be overcome, has to be destroyed because as long as the economy is running on the basis of profit, and accumulation of wealth, and growth we can never achieve equality because it's the antithesis of the system. On a political level we have to have a decentralization of power. I don't agree that we can achieve it through...spontaneous uprisings all over the place, I don't think that's going to get us anywhere. We need to see centralized organizations as facilitating the grassroots movements rather than dominating the grassroots movements.

No going back

I27

I always think it's really exciting when people...move...and I think that the key thing…[is] not necessarily to take them and show them exactly what to do, but [to show them] there's no going back. They're either going to win or they're going to fucking lose and I think that's an important position. To push people out to taking those risks that they wouldn't normally want to take and getting them to feel like that's their decision, feeling empowered, and then creating that contrast, and then there's no going back, you're pretty much taking a leap.

Solidarity against the prison-industrial complex

I12

Definitely supporting people who have had their freedoms taken away by the prison system and by the state...is one of my political priorities and I do that through doing fundraisers, letter writing... staying updated is another important priority. I try and check websites that have updates of global resistance movements regularly.

Resource wars

I25

Right now I think that the future is probably going to entail a lot of world crisis in terms of developing countries and resource wars and I think that'll probably hinge around three issues...peak oil, climate change, and natural resource depletion….I think resource wars are probably going to become more common. I think that as...climate change affects the world that Canada will probably gain a lot of population and be under pressure to exploit its natural resources a lot more. I'd suspect that we'll see this trend continue of sort of beefing up our borders and not letting people in almost like a worldwide [feudal] scenario, and I think that food and water are probably going to become the most valuable political tools...

Leadership not dictatorship

I24

Things can happen awful fast sometimes...and [when it does happen] I think that the Left needs to...be...there to try and pick up the pieces and give it some coordination and leadership. Because I do believe in leadership, I just don't believe in the form of leadership that dictates to everybody what should happen. We've never really had a democracy.

A liberated society

I12

I guess an anarchist society would be a society with the ability to choose your own options, and your own freedoms, and your own lifestyle without having to basically grow up with a set of options that are provided for you...by society. You have very few avenues to go [down] right now. You can either go to school, you can go to trades, you can be homeless, there are very rigid options that we're provided [with] and if you don't conform...it's a struggle.